A Canadian teenager has been rescued from an ice floe drifting in the Arctic sea, where he was reportedly stranded with two polar bears. Search and rescue teams parachuted onto the 15m (40ft) floe after spotting the 17-year-old Inuit youth from the air.

They told the BBC he appeared to have shot and killed a mother polar bear in self-defence, orphaning her two cubs.

The teenager is being treated for mild hypothermia and frostbite in the small town of Coral Harbour, on Hudson Bay.

Jean Pierre Sharp of the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre in Trenton, Ontario, told the BBC the teenager had been on a hunting expedition with an older man in the remote area, when one of their snowmobiles broke down.

The teenager set off alone to find help but became stranded when the ice floe broke away and drifted loose, said Mr Sharp, leaving him trapped overnight as temperatures fell to -20C.

A rescue mission was launched when the men were reported missing. The older man was found not far from the snowmobiles and received treatment for hypothermia.

The younger man was spotted from the air but rescuers lost sight of him as night fell.

He was spotted again on Monday morning about 7km (four miles) off shore - by that time, the floe had drifted at least 45km (30 miles) in the Arctic Ocean.

Paratroopers jumped onto the ice from a Hercules transport plane to rescue him.

"This young man had quite a journey," said Cpt Michael Young, of the Joint Rescue Co-ordination Centre at a Canadian army base in Ontario.

"It was cold and dark, and there was apparently a couple of polar bears on the ice floe with him too," Cpt Young told the AFP news agency.